modern quilts

We are delighted to share the Spoonflower Greenhouse, our classroom and community space here at our Durham, NC HQ, with our local chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild each month. This spring, we partnered with the Triangle Modern Quilt Guild to sponsor a quilt challenge for a local charity, and we are thrilled to congratulate Beky Branagan, the winner of the Triangle Modern Quilt Guild Spoonflower Challenge! Read on for more about the challenge!

The last two decades have been quite the ride for quilter, artist, and author Sherri Lynn Wood, who we were delighted to host last weekend in the Greenhouse, and we just had to get the full story! From selling quilts at a farmer's market less than 20 miles from Spoonflower's Durham HQ to putting the finshing touches on the manuscript for her first book, The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters, Sherri shares her inspiration, creative process, and some of the steps along the way to her brilliant quilting career in this brief interview.

Sherri Lynn Wood is busy these days, to say the least! After a marathon writing session to finish a draft of her first book, The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters, due out next spring through STC Craft, she jetted from her current home in Oakland, CA, all the way to Durham, NC, for an east coast "tour" of teaching gigs that kicked off with an amazing lecture and workshop set right here in the Spoonflower Greenhouse. We were beyond excited to host Sherri Lynn Wood back in the area where her quilting journey began, and we couldn't help asking a few questions–7 to be exact–about the inspiring steps (and quilts) along the way!

Spoonflower co-founder Stephen Fraser and Sherri show off her Mod-Mood Quilt after a tour of our offices.

We're delighted to have quilter and blogger Nicole Neblett of Mama Love Quilts teaching a series of modern quilting workshops in the Greenhouse, our classroom and community space here at our Durham, NC headquarters, this fall! We're kicking off the series with an overview of Free Piecing Techniques on Saturday, October 6 from 2-5pm. Registration opens today at 6pm, so be sure to head over to Eventbrite to reserve your seat today!

After many weeks of frenetic activity around the Spoonflower office, things are relatively quiet in the aftermath of Christmas. A number of folks are on vacation; a few more are sick. We're still printing and cutting fabric, the mail trucks are still arriving, but for the first time in a while people are taking a few minutes to chat with one another instead of just hurrying on to the next thing with their chins tucked to their chests. What an amazing year it's been here at Spoonflower. Not a day goes by that I don't feel grateful for the good will and trust of our customers and community, and also for the dedication and creativity of the team of people who work here. Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you who are reading this.

For the final giveaway of 2012, we've got a copy of a book of modern quilts collected from some of our favorite crafty people called, "Modern Quilts from the Blogging Universe." We'll also give the winner a fat quarter bundle that includes eight Spoonflower fabrics of her or his choice. The contest will close for entries on Wednesday morning, January 2, 2013, at 8am EST, and — in a departure from previous giveaways — you're eligible to enter once each day! Please note that simply commenting is not a means of entry (sadly), and please accept our apologies that the entry form requires a birth date. We would edit that out if we could, but it's just part of the software service we're using to run the contest.